A study of a Japanese R&D group using a new electronic medium identified two contrasting patterns of media use: one involving explicit structuring of community genre norms, and one involving implicit structuring of local genre norms. These patterns provide initial explanations for how people...

Using the genre perspective, we studied the electronic communication of knowledge workers collaborating on a multi-year project and found that their work and interactions were mediated by the use of four genres (or shared types) of communication. Drawing on these findings, we develop the concept...

In this paper we suggest that the use of computer-mediated communication technologies in new and fluid organizations can be facilitated by the explicit and ongoing adapting of those technologies to changing contexts of use. In an exploratory study on the use of a computer conferencing system in...

July 1998

This paper is a study of how representatives of one commercial user industry, life insurance, interacted with some players in the newly forming computer industry in the years after World War II but before the slae of any computers for commercial purposes. In particular, this interaction shows...

This paper takes an initial look at early interactions between insurance as a user industry and vendors of computing equipment during the period from the end of the war into the mid-1950s, when first generation computers were adopted by many insurance firms. The transition of life insurance from...

In this paper, we demonstrate that teams may use genre systems -- sequences of interrelated communicative actions -- strategically or habitually to structure their collaboration. Using data from three teams' use of a collaborative electronic technology, Team Room, over an eight month period, we...

In this paper, we present an alternative way of thinking about technological change in organizations. This alternative approach is motivated by a recognition that traditional models for managing technological change - in which the major steps of the change are defined in advance and the...